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TerraDrive Universe:Stub
The objective of this article is to provide a general guide for dealing with stubs. Basic information A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information. Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs. A definition may be a stub. Use the tag. Ideal stub article Any registered editor may start a stub article. When you write a stub, bear in mind that it should contain enough information for other editors to expand upon it. The key is to provide adequate context. Use your own words — directly copying other sources is Wikipedia:plagiarism, and may in some cases be a violation of copyright. Begin by defining or describing your concept. Write clearly and informatively. State, for example, what a person is famous for, where a new faction is headquartered and what it is known for, the basic details of an event and when it happened, or the main features of a new starship or device. Next, try to expand upon this basic definition. Internally link relevant words, so that users unfamiliar with the subject can understand what you have written. Avoid linking words needlessly — consider which words may require further definition for a casual reader to understand the article. Once you create and save the article, other editors will also be able to enhance it. Categorizing stubs After writing a short article, or finding an unmarked stub, you should insert a stub template. By convention this is placed at the end of the article, after the last section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear last. It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it. Stub templates are transcluded not substituted. Stub templates have two parts: a short message noting the stub's topic and encouraging editors to expand it, and a category link, which places the article in a stub category alongside other stubs on the same topic. The naming for stub templates usually topic-stub; a list of these templates may be found here. You need not learn all the templates — even simply adding helps. The more accurately an article is tagged, however, the less work it is for other sorters later, and the more useful it is for editors looking for articles to expand. If an article overlaps several stub categories, more than one template may be used, but it is strongly recommended that only those relating to the subject's main notability be used. A limit of three or, if really necessary, four stub templates is advised. Stub-related activities are centralized at TDU:Project Stub sorting. This project should be your main reference for stub information, and is where new stub types should be proposed for discussion prior to creation. Removing stub status Once a stub has been properly expanded and becomes a larger article, any editor may remove its stub template. No moderators action or formal permission is needed. Many articles still marked as stubs have in fact been expanded beyond what is regarded as stub size. Be bold in removing stub tags that are clearly no longer applicable. Locating stubs * Category: Stub categories the main list of stub categories and of articles contained within them